Native Intelligence | History | Smithsonian: "The Pilgrims’ lack of preparation was typical. Expeditions from France and Spain were usually backed by the state, and generally staffed by soldiers accustomed to hard living. English voyages, by contrast, were almost always funded by venture capitalists who hoped for a quick cash-out. Decades after first touching the Americas, London’s venture capitalists still had not figured out that New England is colder than Britain despite being farther south. Even when they focused on a warmer place like Virginia, they persistently selected as colonists people ignorant of farming; the hope of fleeing religious persecution uppermost in their minds, the Pilgrims, alas, were an example. Multiplying the difficulties, the would-be colonizers were arriving in the middle of a severe, multiyear drought. Jamestown and the other Virginia forays survived on Indian charity—they were “utterly dependent and therefore controllable,” Karen Ordahl Kuppermann, a New York University historian, has written. The same held true for the adventurers in Plymouth.
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